Carroll Gardens: The Clover Club  the Smith Street cocktail spot from the Flatiron Lounge people have a sign up. Getting close! [Off the Presses]
Gramercy: Shockingly, for some cooked-food enthusiasts, "some of Pure’s dishes, and not just obvious things like salad, are downright delicious." [Mouthing Off/Food & Wine]
Greenwich Village: Somebody told somebody that a bartender at a new bar told him that Keith McNally may have put a $1 million bid on Minetta Tavern. [Eater]
Hell’s Kitchen: Video of Dave Martin concocting a special Valentine’s Day gelato to serve at Crave. [Snack]
Tribeca: David Waltuck "first got behind the stove [at Chanterelle] — and set the restaurant on its path to becoming one of the city’s most cherished — before he was 25 years old. He’s now 53." And ready for a Q&A with Frank Bruni. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
West Village: Grom is totally coming to Bleecker Street, and they’re accepting applications now for a March opening. [Eat for Victory/VV] Was Beatrice Inn raided and shut down last night? [Down by the Hipster]

Since this is a big weekend for holiday parties, we thought you could use some new drink ideas. Why serve your guests the same old Syrah when you could make them a Mae West Royal Diamond Fizz or whip up some spiced butter to go with that hot rum or mulled cider? We sent a camera to LeNell’s, Flatiron Lounge, and Death & Co. to learn winter secrets from some of the city’s booze experts. They even shared the recipes with us. So watch, prepare, drink, and repeat.

In what will surely become mixology’s version of Yankees Stadium's Monument Park, Jill DeGroff, wife of “King of Cocktails” Dale, has sketched caricatures of a dozen “cocktailians” and included them in a calendar that’s going for $17.95 (about the price of an overpriced drink!). Some of the local drink-slingers whose recipes and rosy-cheeked mugs are featured: Audrey Saunders from Pegu Club, Julie Rainer from Flatiron Lounge, and Sasha Petraske from Milk and Honey. Our favorite part, though, is the page on which a pants-less John Hodgman gives his preferred synonyms for booze.

The bad news: The Bourgeois Pig West, easily the coolest bar on Macdougal Street, is closing after this Saturday, and the East Village location is moving. The good news: Owner Ravi DeRossi says that he and the manager at his other bar, Death & Co., decided yesterday to reopen the West Village location in about a month as a Belgian beer bar. But that’s not all! Also in about a month, the East Village location will move across the street to 111 East 7th Street (a larger space, at 1,000 square feet) and morph into what the current location’s manager describes as a, um, “female Death & Co.,” seating 50 to 60 people for chocolate and cheese fondues and a larger wine list of 100 bottles and 50 glasses.

There’s been a bit of intrigue about who’s behind the imposing wooden door of Death & Co., the two-week-old cocktail lounge and restaurant recently mentioned in the Times’ piece about not-so-secret secret bars. Though already slammed by a Friday-night crowd that has forced them to keep a waiting list, first-time owner David Kaplan and his partner Ravi DeRossi (who told us he was tripling the size of his other bar, the Bourgeois Pig) were perfectly willing to do roll call. No, the Reaper is not a partner: Head bartender Philip Ward of Pegu Club and Flatiron Lounge is joined by dapper drinksmiths Brian Miller (Pegu), Jim Kerns (Pegu and Freemans), and another chap who currently works at two high-end restaurants known for their cocktails (no truth to rumors that a Milk and Honey alumnus is involved). The startling lineup isn’t the only thing we came back with: We also scored the new drinks and dinner menus (the chef is the motorcycle-riding Frenchman Jacques Godin, former owner of B3). As for the cocktails, we’ll leave aside Kaplan’s claim that “it’s been 100 years since anyone made a cocktail worth a damn” and say merely that, from a newfangled old-fashioned that incorporates smoky mescal, agave nectar, and a flamed orange peel to a hot buttered rum made from butter that’s whipped and spiced in-house, their twists on the classics are worth a hot double damn. Daniel MaurerDeath & Co., 433 E. 6th St., nr. First Ave.; 212-388-0882Cocktail MenuDinner MenuPREV1NEXT